


homemade soup and apple bunnies

by ohvictor



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cooking, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 10:59:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17181683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohvictor/pseuds/ohvictor
Summary: Mika's struggling to make himself a cute bento, and receives some unexpected help.





	homemade soup and apple bunnies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tozierrichie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tozierrichie/gifts).



> this fic is for gillian! my friend group server did a secret santa and i wrote fics as my gifts - this is one of two i'll be posting. i had a lot of fun writing this!

Mika pokes his head into Yumenosaki’s student kitchen. It’s a relief to find it’s empty, and also that no one’s left a mess on the counters. He slips through the door and shuts it carefully behind him, and makes his way to one of the stations, where he dumps his lunchbox on the counter.

He’s packed some ingredients to make himself a cute bento box. Well, not that many ingredients, because it’s expensive, but he has a pack of microwave rice, some seasoning, an apple, some chicken... And candy, of course. But first, he’s going to make something cute and _hopefully_ appetizing. The microwave is mostly clean, thankfully, and he puts the tub of rice inside and shuts the door, and then opens the door again to check the packaging for how long it’s supposed to cook. And then he inputs the time and starts the microwave. Step one accomplished!

The point of making a cute bento is twofold. First, at one of his part-time jobs, Mika received a package of cute bento picks. They’re little pink bears with smiling faces, and one of them broke, so the store manager damaged out the whole pack and then let Mika have it. The second point is that eating food is really hard, so in _theory_ , cute food should be easier to eat. And he needs to use the picks, because he got them for free and shouldn’t waste a gift. Those are the reasons.

The apple is for making apple bunnies. Or bunny apples? Mika locates a cutting board and a knife, but then he has to wash them both in the sink, and by the time he’s dried them off, the microwave is beeping. He abandons the knife and cutting board on the counter and goes to take the rice out of the microwave, and pulls off the plastic to let it cool down. Then he returns to the cutting board and cuts the apple into manageable slices. How big should apple slices be to make good bunnies? He hadn’t measured, and as he looks down at his apple slices, they don’t look bunny-shaped at all. He should have planned before cutting the apple.

It’s very disheartening, so he eats one of the apple slices plain. It’s a little mushy.

After that, Mika takes the pack of chicken and washes a pan to cook it in. He doesn’t have a plan for the chicken except that it not give him food poisoning; that seems an acceptable minimum, and anything he achieves beyond that will be a pleasant surprise. He turns on the stovetop at his station and dumps the chicken into the pan, and then remembers he needs something like oil so that the chicken cooks better and doesn’t burn. Except he doesn’t have any oil. There’s just the plastic seasoning container he bought for the rice. If it’s good enough to put in his rice, it’s good enough to put on chicken, right? Mika dumps some seasoning on top of the chicken, and then lowers the heat nervously. Whoops.

By now, the rice is mostly cool. Mika lifts the tub gingerly and doesn’t burn his fingers on the plastic, so it must be fine. He scoots the apple slices to one corner of the cutting board and dumps out the rice onto it, where it immediately soaks up the juice left over from cutting the apple and becomes soggy enough that when Mika tries to pack it into a ball, it crumbles apart in his hand. It also probably tastes like apples.

Mika sadly eats another apple slice.

Behind him, the kitchen door bangs open. Mika nearly falls over, his hands flying out to grip the edge of the counter.

In the doorway is Sena Izumi, holding a bulging grocery bag and scowling. Mika’s never talked to Izumi before, but he’s in the same unit as Naru-chan and Ritsu, so he must be all right... Knights is sort of scary, but they’re not the scariest people in Yumenosaki, and Mika’s pretty sure Naru-chan trusts Izumi. So he must be okay.

Yeah. Mika remembers to breathe, and takes a good deep breath that makes him feel steadier. He’s at his own station, minding his own business, so Izumi probably won’t even talk to him anyway.

With this decided, Mika decisively turns back to his sad rice. He retrieves the container of seasoning from the stove and pours some onto his rice pile, and starts mushing it into a ball with renewed vigor. And... Well, it’s hard _not_ to pay attention to Izumi, as several feet down the counter he’s dumping his ingredients onto his workstation. Mika watches in awe as Izumi unloads plastic tubs of vegetables, a wrapped block of tofu, a small bag of some kind of leaves, packets of spices, even a little bottle of oil. Is he cooking a whole feast?

Izumi grabs a large pot from the kitchen’s cookware rack and washes it in the sink—Mika feels some kinship to him, having to wash ostensibly clean pots that were touched by other people before being able to use them—and sets it on his stovetop. He gets a cutting board and knife and starts chopping vegetables, the knife motions so fast and precise Mika completely forgets about his own food and stares openly at Izumi’s work. Izumi even cuts his tofu in the palm of his hand, and then throws it into the pot with everything else.

As Izumi prepares his ingredients, Mika realizes he’s mumbling under his breath. There’s so much to look at that Mika hadn’t looked at Izumi’s face—also, it’s a very _nice_ face, and Mika doesn’t want to stare—but when he does, he realizes Izumi’s lips are moving very fast, and when he concentrates, he can make out the faintest whisper, and an occasional word. Things like _Knights_ and _stupid_ and _calories_ , none of which fit together neatly in a unified idea.

“Oi,” Izumi says suddenly, and he’s not _looking_ at Mika, so Mika doesn’t immediately get that he’s being addressed. Then Izumi says, “Kagehira-kun. Do you like burned food?”

“Ah...!” Mika squeaks. Why would Izumi ask that? “I... I’ll eat it if...there’s nothin’ else?”

“No, you idiot,” Izumi says, as if he was perfectly clear the first time. “Whatever you’re cooking over there is burning.”

Mika looks over at his stovetop. Indeed, his chicken is smoking. He bolts over to it and prods it with a spatula, and finds the whole underside is burnt black.

This is a disaster. Not only has he burnt an important component of his lunch, but he’s embarrassed himself in front of an upperclassman, particularly someone who knows his friends. What if Izumi tells Naru-chan Mika burned his food in the kitchen? Would Naru-chan think he’s stupid, or maybe get mad at him? Mika stares down at his burned chicken. It’s not even sizzling pleasantly the way that chicken usually does when he cooks it. Perhaps he really needed oil to put it in? But he can’t ask Izumi to use some of his, especially after he’s just made an idiot of himself, that would be...

“Did you turn the heat down?” Izumi asks, suddenly standing at Mika’s side. Mika jumps badly, clutching at the counter, and Izumi _sighs_ , and reaches around Mika’s chest to turn the dial on the stovetop down. “You’re just gonna burn it worse. Hey, did you not put oil in this pan? Are you an idiot? Here,” he says, leaning away from Mika’s workstation to reach his own. He grabs his bottle of oil and pours some into the pan around Mika’s sad piece of chicken, and stirs it around with the spatula. As if inspired, he grabs his own cutting board and shakes some leftover onion pieces onto the chicken.

“You can cut the super burnt parts off,” he tells Mika, continuing to push the chicken around the pan as Mika watches him, stunned. “The onion’ll give it flavor. You have to _watch_ what you’ve got on the stove, that’s like cooking 101, got it? It’s probably su~per dry now, too.” He makes a _tsk_ sound with his teeth, and then offers the spatula to Mika. Mika takes it. “You watch it now. I have to make my own food.”

Then Izumi retreats back to his own station, where he continues chopping things and throwing them in the pot. Mika watches as he fills one of the empty plastic containers with water and pours that into the pot too. Izumi grabs a wooden spoon and stirs the mixture around, and then adjusts the heat by one twitch of the dial. The pot is already steaming, except Mika can’t really smell it over the burnt smell of his chicken. Now that he’s noticed the burnt smell, it’s hard to notice anything else.

Mika looks down at his cutting board with the sad rice and the sad apple slices. He feels as though his initial assessment of Izumi, the one where he felt terrified, maybe wasn’t so accurate, especially since Izumi really helped him out, and even gave him some of his food, the oil and onion. And also, since Izumi clearly seems to know stuff about cooking, Mika wants to ask Izumi about the apple slices, and the rice. But Izumi might get mad at him for asking too many questions... Or call him an idiot again. Mika’s used to being called an idiot, but he doesn’t _like_ it.

But time is passing, and Mika’s food isn’t assembling itself.

He watches Izumi for a moment, waiting for him to reach a lull in his activity. He’s stirring his pot of food, and then checks his phone, his lip curling in apparently irritation with whatever he’s reading on there. Hopefully if his phone is annoying him, he won’t be too mad about getting distracted from it...right?

“Hey,” Mika says, and it comes out really quiet, so he tries again. “Hey!”

Izumi looks up, already frowning, and Mika’s insides shrivel up. “What?”

“Could ya, uh...” Mika gestures jerkily at his cutting board. “Could ya help me with my rice? ‘m havin’ trouble getting it to stick together...”

His hands are very sweaty. Izumi sets his phone on his counter and approaches Mika’s station, still frowning, and Mika swallows the urge to back down and apologize.

“You can’t get it to stick together...?” Izumi looks down at the rice. “Why is it so soggy?”

Mika shrivels even more. “Oh, um... I wanted t’make li’l bunny apples... Er, apple bunnies... An’ I used this cutting board to cut ‘em...”

“Oh...” Izumi seems to notice the apple slices. “Well, your rice’s cooled down a lot now. Take a bowl,” he says, already turning to grab a glass bowl off the kitchen’s communal rack, “and toss it with some salt and microwave it again, and then try. You can use plastic wrap to hold it together too. Were you using this seasoning?” He picks up the bottle of rice seasoning and examines it. “Mix this in too, okay? This has so~ome salt in it, but you should still add more.”

Mika takes the bowl carefully, and steps to the side so he can reach his sink and wash it. Izumi hands him a salt shaker and the seasoning container, and he shakes some of both into the bowl and then messily scoops the rice off the cutting board into the bowl.

“That’s it,” Izumi praises, watching Mika mix it all together. “Then just microwave it for like, a minute or so.”

Nodding, Mika sticks the bowl in the microwave and starts the cook time.

“Now, these apples...” Izumi picks up one of the slices and Mika’s knife. “You cut them pretty thin; I’d have done maybe siiix or eight wedges...” He counts Mika’s. “You did...ten? Did you eat some?”

“Yeah,” Mika confesses.

Izumi gives him a knowing look. “Yeah, I figured. Okay, I’ll show you.” He takes the knife and makes two incisions in the peel, then slips the knife under the peel and carefully cuts off a triangle of it. Suddenly, there’s a cute bunny apple in Izumi’s hand, with perfectly formed ears.

“It’s a skinny bunny, but that’s fine, right?” Izumi says, setting the apple slice and knife back down on the cutting board. “Maybe he’s dieting. Oka~ay, I have to get back to my food now. You can do the rest, right?”

He pats Mika’s shoulder and heads back to his station, where he stirs his pot around, humming to himself.

“Don’t forget about your chicken, either,” he adds over his shoulder. Mika startles, and rushes to check his chicken. It looks fine; the non-burned side is cooking nicely, attaining an appetizing golden color. He nudges it around the pan some, and then the microwave goes off, so he goes to grab the bowl of rice from it.

Izumi said to handle the rice while it was warm, and to use plastic wrap. Mika finds a roll of plastic wrap in one of the communal drawers, and pulls out a section of it that he scoops some rice onto. He knows how to do this part, or at least, it isn’t too difficult. He forms the rice into a ball with the plastic wrap tight around it, and then shapes it into a little triangle, just for fun. The seasoning is mixed throughout it pretty evenly. It looks tasty. Mika packages up the rest of the rice like that, making two more rice balls, and then sets them all on his countertop to cool as he finishes the other elements of his meal.

When Mika planned to make bunny apples, he had an image of bunny apples he’s had in the past in his head, but no instructions for how to create them. The technique Izumi showed him for the bunny apples helps him cohere it from theory to practice, and he’s able to easily make the rest of the apple slices into bunnies. They’re all sort of mixed sizes, but he imagines the biggest one is Hajime, who he’s pretty sure is the tallest one in Ra*bits, and the smallest one is Nazuna-nii. That makes him extra fond of the bunny apples... Would Izumi think it’s weird if he gives them a little kiss before eating them? Maybe if he does it facing away from Izumi...?

With the other components finished, Mika goes to check on his chicken. He’s worried that the inside isn’t cooked, so after a bit of struggling he manages to chop it up a little in the pan, revealing that it’s been cooked all the way through. What a relief...! Mika turns off the heat and then searches the kitchen for a plate. Unfortunately he has no cute bento box for his cute bento meal, but that’s okay. He finds a plate, washes it, and shakes the chicken off the pan onto it, and then transfers the bunny apple slices onto it, lining them up nicely along one edge, and then he takes the rice balls out of their wrappers and sets them on the plate too. And then he remembers the little decorative picks and gets them from his bag, and carefully sticks them into the rice balls, and then in the chicken too when he has more picks than rice balls.

Finally, it’s done. Mika surveys his plate happily. It’s so pretty, and organized, and he thinks he’s got a lot of different food groups, so it’s probably nutritious, too. He’s so proud of it, he almost doesn’t want to eat it.

Ah, but he wouldn’t have been able to make it without Izumi’s help...! Mika had gotten so focused on finally finishing his lunch that he lost track of what his fellow kitchen occupant has been doing.

He looks over at Izumi’s station and finds Izumi ladling soup into a bowl. The soup is steaming, and Mika sniffs the air and realizes it smells _really_ tasty, although he can’t put a name to the flavor. It’s got a pretty clear broth, and lots of vegetables and chunks of tofu, and it’s probably super nutritious, too. Izumi seems like the kind of guy who cares a lot about nutrition. Izumi sets the bowl on the counter and takes a plastic-wrapped spoon out of his bag, and then unwraps the spoon and starts eating his soup, carefully blowing on each mouthful.

Would it be weird to eat together? There’s nowhere to _sit_ properly in the kitchen, so they’re both just standing at their stations, bent oddly over their plates. Mika takes one of the apple slices and crunches on it, and Izumi looks up.

“Oh, hey, it all turned out fine,” he says, craning his neck to look over at Mika’s station. “Looks tasty.”

“T-Thank you!” Mika stammers. “I mean, thank _you_ , ‘cause I wouldn’t have been able t’do it without ya...”

“That’s not what I meant,” Izumi huffs. “You did most of it without me, so accept it, okay?”

“Okay...” Mika eats another apple slice, unsure what to do with his hands. “Um... Yours smells really good!”

“It’s my mama’s recipe,” Izumi says, and it looks like his chest puffs up a bit. “ _Kenchinjiru_. Wanna try?”

“Oh...” Mika fumbles to put down the apple slice he’s raised to his mouth. “I don’t have a spoon...”

Izumi reaches into his bag and pulls out a second plastic-wrapped spoon, which he hands to Mika.

“Oh...” Mika pulls the plastic wrap off with his teeth, which goes all right. He pulls a bit of plastic out of his mouth after the spoon is freed. “Okay.”

Izumi offers him his bowl, and Mika carefully takes a small spoonful of the broth, and then adds a few vegetables to the spoonful to be polite. When he brings it to his mouth, he blows on it like he saw Izumi do, and finds it tastes even better than it smells. The vegetables don’t have much of a taste, and they’re soft in texture, so Mika doesn’t hate them. Overall, it’s very good.

It’s incredible that such a clearly masterful chef helped Mika with his own miserable cooking, and even gave him a few things. Mika really is lucky today...!

The soup warms him up from the inside as he tackles the rest of his food with renewed appetite. He devours the chicken so fast that Izumi, watching him over his bowl, says, “Whoa, if you eat too fast you’ll get sick, okay?”

Obediently, Mika slows down, focusing on chewing each bite before swallowing and picking up another. He finishes the rice balls much more slowly, finding he wants to savor the salty mouthfuls of rice, and then he eats the rest of the apple bunnies.

Just like that, his food is all gone. He feels full, but pleasantly, like he’s full of yummy things that’ll keep him going for the rest of the afternoon. He looks over and finds Izumi tipping the bowl over his mouth to drink the rest of the broth. When he finds Mika watching, he lowers the bowl quickly, scowling, and thumbs a dribble of broth off his bottom lip.

“Oi, don’t watch other people eat,” he snaps, and Mika quickly looks back down at his plate.

He hears Izumi get up and move to the stove, and Mika hops up immediately. “Hey, I... I can do your dishes! Since you helped me with cooking...” He sets his dish down on his own counter, as Izumi turns and looks back at him, still scowling.

“Do I look like I can’t do dishes?” he grumbles. “I’ll do my _own_ dishes.”

“O...Okay,” Mika says.

His feelings must show on his face, because Izumi backpedals. “Jeez... If you’re going to be stressed about it, we can do them together? I’ll wash,” he says, and grabs a sponge from the rim of his sink. “You can dry and put away.”

That’s a relief. Mika nods happily and starts gathering all the cookware he used, including the burnt pan, which he feels is unfair to make Izumi wash. He carefully transfers all the cookware into Izumi’s sink, and then hovers anxiously as Izumi packs up his leftover soup, carries his dishes to the sink, and then slowly washes the first dish. Once it’s handed to Mika, he dries it quickly, wanting to do a good job, but then when he puts it on its shelf and returns to the sink, Izumi’s still working on the second dish.

Maybe this was a bad idea. Mika fumbles for something to talk about, to fill the silence. “Hey, uh... I’m in class with two ‘f your unitmates, ya know? Naru-chan and Ritsu-kun...” Izumi hands him the second, washed dish, and he hastens to dry it and put it away. “I really love Naru-chan, and Ritsu-kun is so cool... I saw a Knights live once,” he adds, and then clarifies, “‘cause Naru-chan said it was one you guys all worked really hard on and it’d mean a lot if I came an’ saw it... It was really cool! You guys are so talented...” He takes another clean dish from Izumi and dries it too. “Ritsu-kun’s, like, a whole different person onstage, ‘cause in class he’s just sleepin’ on his desk an’ buggin’ Mao-kun...”

“Yeah, he does that during unit practice too,” Izumi says.

Clearly talking about Naru-chan and Ritsu is an okay topic of conversation, so Mika keeps going, talking about a cute cafe he and Naru-chan went to recently, and how much he loves Naru-chan, and then he goes on a tangent about some of Knights’ costumes, because he’s learning about costume-making, and someone really talented and patient must have made them, because Mika can’t imagine doing all that beadwork without getting super frustrated or pricking himself a few times.

And then Izumi stops handing him dishes, and Mika looks up to find that the sink is empty and Izumi’s squeezing the sponge out and drying his hands. Mika quickly dries his hands too.

“Maybe I’ll see ya in here again sometime,” he says to Izumi, as Izumi starts packing up his stuff. Mika feels very fond, even though Izumi wasn’t always nice to him.

“Yeah,” Izumi agrees, pausing to look up at Mika. “Maybe get better at cooking before then.” He turns to grab his container of soup off the counter. “And wash your face more, okay? You have nice features, if you’d just take care of your skin.”

Mika’s never been told that before. Was Izumi looking at his face the whole time?! He can feel himself blushing, and he raises his hands to his cheeks to cover it. “T... Thank you,” he manages.

Izumi turns back around, his bag all packed up, and gives Mika an appraising look. He doesn’t seem to care that Mika’s flustered. “Yeah.”

He steps around Mika and heads out of the kitchen. Mika pats his own cheeks a few times, and then hurries to pack up his things, careful to throw away the plastic wrap and packaging he’d used.

His body feels warm and full, maybe a little strange from actually eating enough food. And his heart feels warm and full too. When he gets to class, he can tell Naru-chan all about meeting Izumi in the kitchen, and maybe he can tell Ritsu too, if Ritsu’s not asleep. With even more to look forward to, it feels as though his good day is only going to get better, and he practically skips the rest of the way back to 2B’s classroom.


End file.
